The Infection

Anne could not remember when she last got some real sleep. She recalled that the last time it happened, she dreamed of a single baby tooth resting on Trudy’s mantle. She had not truly slept since then. She stared at the man’s flashlight until her vision washed out in a flash of white and she became aware of two men arguing loudly. One of them said it was only a matter of time before the food and water ran out and then they’d be killing each other over the crumbs. The other said the world was ending outside and only a fool would try to make plans that lasted longer than a day.

Anne blinked at the voices. It was daytime, she realized; time had blurred again. Beams of morning sunlight streamed through a row of punched windows near the ceiling. The room was a vehicle service garage. People milled around aimlessly, bartering candy and cigarettes, settling disputes with swift and furious beatings, emptying their waste into a row of portable toilets, washing themselves with sponges and tepid water poured into plastic bowls. The air smelled like old motor oil and human waste and fear. People huddled around radios and argued over the news, then drifted away. Colorful public health notices plastered the walls, orange and red and yellow, reminding her to wash her hands and avoid the Infected and approach law enforcement and military personnel calmly, without sudden movements, and with her hands over her head.

She realized that she was not in some type of government fortress but instead an old-fashioned refugee camp, and a temporary one at that. How long had she been here? How long had it been since her world ended? She felt lightheaded, like she had not eaten in days. She thought of a blueberry pie sitting on a kitchen counter, covered in flies.

“The authorities are in control,” a voice said. “Help is coming. Don’t give up hope.”

The skinny, shell-shocked kid was some sort of government official and he was handing out lists of evacuation centers printed on clean yellow sheets of paper.

“This one’s been overrun,” somebody said in a disgusted rage. “I was fucking there.”

“The next one on the list is five miles from here.”

“Might as well be on the Moon.”

“The only safe place is right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

The kid ignored them, continuing to hand out his yellow sheets and deliver his simple mantra of hope with an unconvincing smile.

He held one out until Anne accepted it. His dead face warped into his plastic smile and he said, “The authorities are in control. Help is coming. Don’t give up hope. Report any suspicious behavior.”

Nobody else seemed to be in charge. The cops who’d brought her here were gone. Even the kind woman wearing a blue Wal-Mart apron who eventually brought her rations appeared to be some sort of volunteer. Then she saw several men working the room, shaking hands and looking concerned and writing things down in a notebook. This ad hoc leadership committee gradually grew close enough for her to hear one of them, a gentle-looking overweight man wearing large glasses, tell people that they had to get organized.

“Why?” a man said belligerently.

A woman sitting on a cot said: “You’re just like them.”

The overweight man blinked, adjusted his glasses and said, “Them?”

“The government.”

“But we’re all alive because of the government,” he reasoned. “They brought us here and gave us food and water, blankets, medical supplies. We’re trying to get organized in case the supplies run out and the government can’t send us anything else.”

“Like I said,” the woman said triumphantly.

Anne shook her head in mild disgust. At least these guys are doing something, she thought. She recognized something of herself in them.

“But I could use some batteries if you got any you could spare,” the woman went on.

Anne noticed an armored fighting vehicle parked at the far end of the garage and decided to take a closer look. Wrapping the blanket around her tightly and hiding her half-full water bottle in her back pocket, she wandered through the dense smells and noises of the camp until she found an empty spot where she could sit and put her back against a concrete pillar with a clear view of the impressive war machine. Three soldiers stood hunched over the engine, arguing in language so technical it was almost foreign. Anne thought they looked more like mechanics than soldiers. She watched them while she slowly sipped her bottle of water. They cleaned engine parts with rags and occasionally studied the crowd around them like engineers looking for cracks in a dam.

She planned to stay close to them. It was obvious to her that the man she’d heard arguing this morning was right: This place would not last very long. If anything happened, the safest spot in the room would be behind the soldiers and their weapons. She hated herself for thinking this. Anne cursed herself for wanting to survive.